Awakened by loud trash haulers, recyclers

No question, living in the city can be a noisy proposition. Wailing sirens, honking car horns, even jets taking off from Logan Airport can all make the term "quiet enjoyment" sometimes seem like a pipe dream. But some types of urban noise strike a couple of Allston tipsters and GlobeWatch alike as pretty unreasonable.

"We had to fight the driver of a Capitol Waste truck and the city for months over a truck emptying a dumpster at 3 in the morning, sometimes twice a week at the school near us, creating an incredible noise disturbance, partly from banging the dumpster to truck and partly from the warning back-up lights of the truck as it backed up repeatedly," writes Lisa McDonough and her husband, Greg Lyons. The trucks were picking up refuse from dumpsters behind the Gardner Pilot Academy in Allston, the pair say. The problem went on all last year but seems to have been reined in recently thanks to persistent efforts by school officials and some choice words the couple offered to the driver one night, McDonough says. Now, a recycling hauler has been out there doing the same thing.

"Capitol finally stopped doing that but then [two weeks ago] at 3 a.m. PaperRetriever [recycling] was out there emptying the dumpster and then drove off the wrong way down a one way. Stuff like this makes city living a real challenge. It is so callous to cause such a disturbance when the school is right by two houses. Mine isn't even one of those but it still woke me," McDonough wrote.

"Last year when we e-mailed the city hot line the city wasn't very responsive until we e-mailed them a copy of a noise ordinance which related to emptying of dumpsters. The city always seems to make the citizen do the work with this kind of nuisance issue."

Though the city is able to restrict the hours in which residential trash haulers make pickups (no earlier than 7 a.m.), state law prevents imposing such limits on commercial service, said Dennis Royer, chief of the public works and transportation department.

The department issues permits and contracts for all sanitation firms doing business in Boston. Companies are allowed to haul during "off-hours" because getting down city streets and into alleyways and school parking lots is often difficult during regular business hours, he said. "It's a complicated issue in terms of timing the pickups," said Royer. "The last thing we want to do is create neighborhood issues."

Royer said he plans to sit down with representatives from both hauling companies and the school to see if they can find an informal solution, such as having trucks come at a later time in the morning before classes start, moving the dumpsters, or having workers compact trash and recyclables only as they're driving away from the neighborhood.

WHO'S IN CHARGE
Dennis Royer, chief, Public Works Department
One City Hall Square, Room 714
Boston, MA 02201-2024
617-635-4900